Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(N.Z.) to stare.

1919		S. Lewis Free Air 168: ‘Jim Barmberry [...] don’t stand there gawping and gooping’.
1959		G. Slatter Gun in My Hand 52: This land where life is so flat, stale and unprofitable that when the Waimak floods in December twenty thousand jam the roads to goop at it.